AIBU to wonder why women still accept unequal relationships?

[Tinnybinnylinny]

I have been an avid lurker and infrequent commenter…..

Its 2026, women have had the vote for over a
hundred years, access to education, we are about three generations in for women being able to earn professional salaries…their own business/ whatever it is. Yet - why are women still raising male children to treat their partners/wives like crap (not all men, and of course no one posts when it’s a happy life)?.

Why do women:

a. Accept it?;

b. raise the next generation to do the same (I appreciate these are inter- linked).

I see it on so many threads on here and in real life. Women that are the high earners - and yet do everything for the kids and the partners/ husbands….

The law/ employers etc can change/ have all the polices etc, but it doesn’t matter….

What am I missing?

This is the best argument ever for not having kids until you've been together for at least 5 years and you're in your 30s :)

But that won't even help. I was more picky in my 20s because I still hoped to find a great guy. But the time I was in my 30s, I met a guy and was just desperate to be with him. He was OK but nothing special, but the draw to be with him and start a family was so strong. Yes of course I didn't have to do it even so. But it's hard to turn down a meal when youre really hungry.

It's not really flattering but it's the truth, we are driven by biology and when we want to eat, rest, have sex or have a baby, nothing else seems important.

I get that, it’s not perfect (but nothing is) but it’s not the unacceptable behaviour - if you see what I mean?

Well I suppose by perfect I mean unacceptable behaviour, but also there's shades of grey there. There's many types of levels of this.

100%.

One problem is, finding a relationship isn't like buying a car. You can't review all the models and filter by your needs and wants. You meet one person, OK you dump them, you have no idea when or if you will meet someone else. You might meet someone else, they could be worse. Or more likely better in some ways, worse in others. And time is so so short. It slips through your fingers.

Yes, being single is great, but I think it's disingenuous asking "why do women even want to be in relationships".
I don't mean to say we have no agency, because we do, but you have to consider each of us is decended from a million years of ancestors who liked sex and having babies, so it's no wonder our genes are that way as well.

Are you for real? Have you ever been in a Muslim household? Have you not seen how their boys are lauded above all others? Treated like little Gods.
And the result is exactly as expected and will continue to be moving forward unless somehow dramatic societal change can be brought about.

In my experience & social circles it’s like this:

• The men are nice! Kind, sensible, sensitive, responsible, competent, fully on-board with equal partnership. Have female friends, good relationships with mothers / sisters, know how to cook and clean and generally sort their lives. All green flags.
• A baby arrives! For a couple of months the man is doting father, hands-on dad etc. Enjoys the fun bits of parenting, sees all the dull admin and drudgery as optional stuff his wife is obsessed with, having apparently become an uptight control freak since having the baby.
• Husband continues his life more or less exactly as it was before but doing a less housework (because he’s busy training for a triathlon), and not cooking anymore because what’s the point as the baby will only eat nuggets, and not doing the food shop because he doesn’t know what the baby is eating these days and his wife has all these opinions about it… and he silently and secretly judges his wife for letting herself go, neglecting her hobbies and fitness, etc
• Wife tries to address imbalance in mental & domestic load, husband feels attacked, sulks, withdraws, wails ‘I can’t do anything right so why bother’
• Wife stops doing various things in the hope husband will ‘step up’ - and he doesn’t, and the kids suffer, and she’s the one who gets the blame & judgement & disappointment when the kids miss sports practice or don’t have clean uniform or a costume for WBD or whatever
• Before long mum and dad can’t stand one another.
• Separation / divorce is expensive, disruptive, involves kids changing schools, it’s clear husband will make the process as difficult as he possibly can regardless of impact on kids
• Lots of pressure on mum not to selfishly break up the family / deprive children of a father / etc all because of some arguments about housework

Etc happily ever after

Women are not ‘accepting’ this like it’s OK, or because we’re weak - but men are fucking selfish, and will prioritise their own comfort and ease the moment anything gets difficult or boring. Even the good ones, even the lovely well-brought-up sons of doting MN mums of boys.

And someone needs to make sure things get done, and sometimes staying with a useless mardy man you have come to despise is a better option than separating and trying to co-parent with someone who makes a point of being unreliable.

In a way, it's an even better question to ask why do men get in to relationships. Many men seem to be in a relationships with women they don't seem to like, and choose to have children they don't appear to want, just for what? Their housework done and the chance to have a bit of sex early in the relationship??

I see your point.

A lot could be achieved by making counselling mandatory before marriage. Not after, anyone who wants to escape a marriage should not be forced into the same room with a possible abuser.

But six months of counselling should be mandatory before getting married. A couple of hours every other weekend to discuss outright and make it crystal clear where you stand on housework (with every single chore listed and discussed), finances, children, fidelity, childcare, extended family involvement. Every last thing. And if you don't do the counselling, you don't get to get married. You can still live together of course, have kids, but make marriage something people have to attain, which always makes it more desirable, instead of just something any fuckknuckle can do on a drunken weekend.

I truly, honestly believe a LOT of women would shy away from marriage once the groom-to-be was forced to actually state out loud his selfish wants and lazy bastarditus, and they actually had to discuss that in the cold light of day. And if he did turn out to be an abject liar, at least she'd know he flatly lied upfront which would hurry the booting him out process along.

I think a big part of the problem is that when we love and want someone women have a habit of simply lying to ourselves. What if we put marital expectations under a microscope and make it impossible to go in blind? Just a thought.

Marital rape was made illegal in 1993

My Grandmother wasn’t allowed a credit card or to be listed on her mortgage

My Grandparents told my mum that there was no way they’d support her going to university as she’d just get pregnant

if you think women since 1926 had just as many rights as men you are deluded.

This is spot on and a much more pertinent question than the one originally posed by OP.

There are so many posts on these boards about idle men who won't "step up to the plate" and take on their share of the load (mental as well as physical).

I don't think that these guys suddenly become couch potatoes when the kids arrive, they were, IMO, all idle and selfish from the get-go.
My first husband was lazy and selfish but because he was a shift worker he wasn't there all the time and I didn't really notice it. He said that shift work made him tired. So I asked him to come off shift work, which he did, but nothing changed.

I started calling him out on his lack of effort and, guess what, he had an affair and left for someone who was more compliant and was happy to be a "sexual housekeeper".

Thank goodness I never had any kids with him !

I am sorry if I was not sufficiently eloquent in the original post. Nowhere did I say that women had the same rights as men for over a hundred years, in fact I do refer to being three generations in for women on earning power (note I didn’t say women earn the same as men; that is another thread).

While I completely understand this is a public forum, it does seem really rather odd that people hone in on one specific part of a sentence, disregarding what went before and after.

I guess that is people.

Careers for women were very limited in the 1930s. Either you became a nurse, a hairdresser or a shorthand typist. Those that were able to go to university ended up teaching in all-girl grammar schools and stayed single.

Women weren't appreciated in the workforce until WW2 when they filled in the gaps that the men had left by going to war.

It wasn't until the contraceptive pill was invented in the late 60's that women had a choice about how many kids they had and how they would be spaced. It was originally invented for married women who had several children and didn't want any more.

It wasn't until the 1970s that a women could have a mortgage in her own right to buy a property. And then, they had to get a male relative to guarantee the loan.

The attitude "why send a women to university because they are only going to waste that education by leaving and having a family?" was prevalent until then.

Fortunately these outdated ideas are no longer accepted but it seems to me that some women are still "selling themselves short"

I mean , it’s not exactly rocket science is it?

Some women were raised and conditioned to be like that.
Some women have very low self esteem.
Some women have traumatic pasts.
Some women really, really want children and/or a relationship.
Some women don’t want the stigma of being a single parent.
Some women are trapped for various reasons.
Some women want to be in control so it actually suits them.
Some women settle/overlook bad behaviour because it’s not “that bad” if everything else is ticking along nicely.

I could keep going.

This is not my experience at all. However, to decide whether a relationship is equal or not, you do have to look at everything, not just selective picking.

Yes, women tend to be the main care giver even when working FT in a career. However, men are more likely to do any house maintenance and deal with tradesmen, and frankly, I'm glad my husband deals with this because I found much more boring and stressful than to manage my kids.

Ala, you are not taking taking into consideration women wanting to be in control. The 'you don't know how to do it properly so I'll just do it myself' brigade, when the man is just doing it differently but her way has to be the only way.

And I agree that a solid marriage doesn't gave to be absolutely equal all the time. My experience of the best marriage is one when for some years, one does more but at a later time, it's the other way around.

why are women still raising male children to treat their partners/wives like crap

what am I reading?! You’re blaming mothers for the actions of their adult sons? How about men are accountable for treating their partners like crap despite their mothers teaching them not to.

Both of these can be true. And if men show no inclination at all as a cohort to change their behaviours, whining “what about the menz” when the only actions available to women is their own intolerance of shit, is pointless.

I do think women have more agency than they want to admit, and many squander it when they become mothers. In part I think because they’ve never had to seriously negotiate for what they want in a relationship and get another adult to change their behaviour as a result.

What baffles me is that a lot of women accept a relationship where they have zero rights - moving into a house they have no rights to, giving up their career and having multiple children with someone they are not married to. Being totally dependent on their other half financially, being treated as a nanny and having no say in anything. This happens time and time again! Where is their self respect? At least marry first before having children, or if you dont want to, dont give up your own house and job.

There are some women who have daddy issues and it seems go from one man (or lack of one) into needing another to care for them like a surrogate parent, and I presume lack of intelligence and in some cases independance, then children grow up knowing no different as they lead very insular lives, and the cycle continues

Do you think the way men treat women in Afganistan is the women's fault as well? Or are we responsible for what men do - just here, in this part of the world?

Are you incapable of seeing the different options available to women in a western democracy where we have education and financial independence versus a fundamentalist theocracy?

You can't really blame someone for having issues but what really baffles me - why not get married? If you want this sort of trad set up, why not do it properly?

There's a lot of posters confusing "women are responsible for what men do" - obviously not - and "women are responsible for what they do, and what they accept in their lives".

Thing is while social conditioning etc etc obviously exists and the work of undoing it on a societal level is ongoing (and feels even more difficult than ever in 2026) - no one is going to step in to fix any individual woman's unequal relationship. Only she can do that.

No one should be blamed for having issues but it is not hard to work out what is best for any woman is stay financially independant from a man, why dont women stand on their own 2 feet and act like a grown up

This is a very odd question. Let me break it down for you:

• Afghanistan - women have zero choice, not even considered fully humans
• West - women have choice in pretty much everything that happens in their life

I assume some don't want to, some want to be mums and live off husband's income. But, as I said, if you choosing this path, why not make sure you have rights and is respected?